Today's NYTimes Travel Section:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/travel/what-would-you-think-of-living-in-luxembourg.html
Here’s the opposite of fun: One of your 5-year-old twins has fallen from a tall, dangerous playground apparatus, and possibly broken a bone, and so you are in an emergency room where English is not spoken, trying to have a type of conversation for which Berlitz doesn’t prepare you, and the pain and suffering and maybe long-term well-being of your kid hang in the balance.
I couldn’t have imagined myself in this situation a year earlier, which was when my wife came home from her Midtown office one evening and asked, “What would you think of living in Luxembourg?” We had been married for a decade, but there were still some subjects about which I wasn’t eager to be completely honest. One was that I didn’t know exactly where Luxembourg was. Or even what it was. A country? City? State in Germany? Was I confusing it with Liechtenstein?
Wherever and whatever Luxembourg was, I had never lived anywhere except New York City and an upstate college town. No junior year abroad, no dubious job in post-Cold War Eastern Europe, no early ’90s stint in Seattle or unsuccessful stab at screenwriting in West Hollywood. My younger brother had lived in China, but I had never even considered the East Side. I regretted this hole in my personal experience, worried that it reflected an unappealing level of cowardice, which I was eager to dispel.
I had traveled a good amount, to the expected places — Mexico and Costa Rica, the Dordogne and Sicily, a couple of weeks visiting that braver brother in China, a month in Italy, a tropical island or two. But all that travel had been vacation: breaks from normal life. This would be the opposite: the reinvention of normal, someplace else.
I was at a good point in my career for reinvention. After years of being a book editor, I had quit and become one of those overcaffeinated, undergroomed guys you see in downtown cafes, pecking away at a laptop, ghostwriting and book-doctoring and freelance-editing, working on ideas and projects that weren’t really my own. We still employed our full-time babysitter; I was still working full(ish) time, though no longer showing up at an office every day at 9.
I thought it would be easy for me to leave that work behind, to leave New York behind, to do something completely new, somewhere new. I was nearly 40 years old. If this type of adventure was ever going to be part of my life, this seemed like my best chance to embark on it, to live abroad long enough to feel as if I was an extended-stay traveler rather than a tourist.
So we took what’s called a preview trip, a long weekend in a business hotel, nice meals and fine weather, visits to the tourist attractions. And a full day of house-hunting with Petra, a skeptical relocation agent who had a hard time accepting that we wanted to live in an apartment in the dead center of the Unesco World Heritage old town. She was used to clients who wanted big houses in the suburbs, with driveways and yards; she was used to Americans who wanted to recreate America, abroad. We didn’t. We wanted a European version of Manhattan.
We found our vision on a curving street called the Rue de l’Eau, just a single lane wide, no room for parking on either side. Across this narrow street was the thick, rugged stone wall that protected the backyard of the Grand Ducal Palace, which is to say that the monarch lived across the street. When the grand duke himself was in residence (which was not always; apparently, monarchs tend to have more than one home), the Luxembourgish flag flew; when a foreign dignitary was visiting, some other flag was hoisted.
A few yards from the front door was the main town market, the Marché-aux-Poissons — that is, back in the Middle Ages, though now this building had become a vertical dining plaza called the Île Gastronomique, with a half-dozen restaurants, including a Michelin star. Around the corner was a massive rock outcropping, the Bock, on which a castle was built more than a thousand years ago, and under which was dug an extensive network of tunnels, some large enough for whole army regiments to hide, on their horses.
Sure, I thought: Let’s move here. We had a big party — big anniversary, big birthday, big going-away. Then we went away, with no specific plan to return.
As it turns out, Luxembourg is a small country that’s about the same geographic size, and half the population, of Rhode Island, wedged into the overcast intersection of France, Belgium and Germany. Luxembourg is also the name of its capital city, though I had grown up with eight million neighbors, so “city” didn’t seem quite the right word for a place with fewer than a hundred thousand residents, with no subway or bad neighborhoods or street food.
My wife immediately started going to her office, earning a living, doing the thing she came to Europe to do. Me, I looked at our twins, their big eyes staring back at me, and I thought: huh. What now?
I was eager to embrace European newness — Celsius and kilometers, euros and French, the ineffable pleasures of traffic circles. But at the same time, I was forced to embrace, tentatively, being a stay-at-home parent, the endless loop of chores and errands augmented by navigating the bureaucracy of moving abroad (residency permits, physical exams, dog insurance). That was in addition to the complication that I didn’t really speak the language.
I struggled to accomplish surprisingly elusive tasks like throwing away the garbage, securing a parking permit, identifying the demarcation line between the men’s changing area and the women’s in the public pool’s locker room.
This was not fun. On the other hand, when I walked out my front door, I passed a handful of cafes with outdoor tables, two museums within a minute, a dozen restaurants. The butcher gave sausage samples to the children, the pet-supply store handed out candy. A few blocks away, one of the main squares was bordered by restaurants, while the other hosted the twice-weekly market, with the mushrooms guy and the onions guy, the woman selling Brittany’s specialties and the couple with Tyrol’s cured meats, the truck that offered three items: small rotisserie chickens, larger free-range rotisserie chickens and delicious sliced potatoes roasted in the fat dripping from the chickens.
It was a pretty appealing version of Europe, its real-life charms living up to the imagined version, my heels clicking on the wet cobblestones, International Herald Tribune tucked under the arm of my raincoat, like a crime-novel American spy.
Also appealing was the prospect of traveling a lot, which I had never before done, so now we did, another permanent item on an unfamiliar to-do list. We rented an apartment in Rome near the Campo de’ Fiori, another in the Barrio Gotico of Barcelona. We flew to London for a long weekend, to Ireland for a long night of dinner with friends in a castle. We went to Paris on a regular basis, taking the two-hour high-speed train into the Gare de l’Est or driving with the dog and maybe some visiting relative, hurtling through Lorraine and Champagne in our German station wagon, purchased secondhand after a month of car shopping, a time frame that corresponded exactly to how long it took us to figure out that break was the French term for station wagon.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/travel/what-would-you-think-of-living-in-luxembourg.html
Here’s the opposite of fun: One of your 5-year-old twins has fallen from a tall, dangerous playground apparatus, and possibly broken a bone, and so you are in an emergency room where English is not spoken, trying to have a type of conversation for which Berlitz doesn’t prepare you, and the pain and suffering and maybe long-term well-being of your kid hang in the balance.
I couldn’t have imagined myself in this situation a year earlier, which was when my wife came home from her Midtown office one evening and asked, “What would you think of living in Luxembourg?” We had been married for a decade, but there were still some subjects about which I wasn’t eager to be completely honest. One was that I didn’t know exactly where Luxembourg was. Or even what it was. A country? City? State in Germany? Was I confusing it with Liechtenstein?
Wherever and whatever Luxembourg was, I had never lived anywhere except New York City and an upstate college town. No junior year abroad, no dubious job in post-Cold War Eastern Europe, no early ’90s stint in Seattle or unsuccessful stab at screenwriting in West Hollywood. My younger brother had lived in China, but I had never even considered the East Side. I regretted this hole in my personal experience, worried that it reflected an unappealing level of cowardice, which I was eager to dispel.
I had traveled a good amount, to the expected places — Mexico and Costa Rica, the Dordogne and Sicily, a couple of weeks visiting that braver brother in China, a month in Italy, a tropical island or two. But all that travel had been vacation: breaks from normal life. This would be the opposite: the reinvention of normal, someplace else.
I was at a good point in my career for reinvention. After years of being a book editor, I had quit and become one of those overcaffeinated, undergroomed guys you see in downtown cafes, pecking away at a laptop, ghostwriting and book-doctoring and freelance-editing, working on ideas and projects that weren’t really my own. We still employed our full-time babysitter; I was still working full(ish) time, though no longer showing up at an office every day at 9.
I thought it would be easy for me to leave that work behind, to leave New York behind, to do something completely new, somewhere new. I was nearly 40 years old. If this type of adventure was ever going to be part of my life, this seemed like my best chance to embark on it, to live abroad long enough to feel as if I was an extended-stay traveler rather than a tourist.
So we took what’s called a preview trip, a long weekend in a business hotel, nice meals and fine weather, visits to the tourist attractions. And a full day of house-hunting with Petra, a skeptical relocation agent who had a hard time accepting that we wanted to live in an apartment in the dead center of the Unesco World Heritage old town. She was used to clients who wanted big houses in the suburbs, with driveways and yards; she was used to Americans who wanted to recreate America, abroad. We didn’t. We wanted a European version of Manhattan.
We found our vision on a curving street called the Rue de l’Eau, just a single lane wide, no room for parking on either side. Across this narrow street was the thick, rugged stone wall that protected the backyard of the Grand Ducal Palace, which is to say that the monarch lived across the street. When the grand duke himself was in residence (which was not always; apparently, monarchs tend to have more than one home), the Luxembourgish flag flew; when a foreign dignitary was visiting, some other flag was hoisted.
A few yards from the front door was the main town market, the Marché-aux-Poissons — that is, back in the Middle Ages, though now this building had become a vertical dining plaza called the Île Gastronomique, with a half-dozen restaurants, including a Michelin star. Around the corner was a massive rock outcropping, the Bock, on which a castle was built more than a thousand years ago, and under which was dug an extensive network of tunnels, some large enough for whole army regiments to hide, on their horses.
Sure, I thought: Let’s move here. We had a big party — big anniversary, big birthday, big going-away. Then we went away, with no specific plan to return.
As it turns out, Luxembourg is a small country that’s about the same geographic size, and half the population, of Rhode Island, wedged into the overcast intersection of France, Belgium and Germany. Luxembourg is also the name of its capital city, though I had grown up with eight million neighbors, so “city” didn’t seem quite the right word for a place with fewer than a hundred thousand residents, with no subway or bad neighborhoods or street food.
My wife immediately started going to her office, earning a living, doing the thing she came to Europe to do. Me, I looked at our twins, their big eyes staring back at me, and I thought: huh. What now?
I was eager to embrace European newness — Celsius and kilometers, euros and French, the ineffable pleasures of traffic circles. But at the same time, I was forced to embrace, tentatively, being a stay-at-home parent, the endless loop of chores and errands augmented by navigating the bureaucracy of moving abroad (residency permits, physical exams, dog insurance). That was in addition to the complication that I didn’t really speak the language.
I struggled to accomplish surprisingly elusive tasks like throwing away the garbage, securing a parking permit, identifying the demarcation line between the men’s changing area and the women’s in the public pool’s locker room.
This was not fun. On the other hand, when I walked out my front door, I passed a handful of cafes with outdoor tables, two museums within a minute, a dozen restaurants. The butcher gave sausage samples to the children, the pet-supply store handed out candy. A few blocks away, one of the main squares was bordered by restaurants, while the other hosted the twice-weekly market, with the mushrooms guy and the onions guy, the woman selling Brittany’s specialties and the couple with Tyrol’s cured meats, the truck that offered three items: small rotisserie chickens, larger free-range rotisserie chickens and delicious sliced potatoes roasted in the fat dripping from the chickens.
It was a pretty appealing version of Europe, its real-life charms living up to the imagined version, my heels clicking on the wet cobblestones, International Herald Tribune tucked under the arm of my raincoat, like a crime-novel American spy.
Also appealing was the prospect of traveling a lot, which I had never before done, so now we did, another permanent item on an unfamiliar to-do list. We rented an apartment in Rome near the Campo de’ Fiori, another in the Barrio Gotico of Barcelona. We flew to London for a long weekend, to Ireland for a long night of dinner with friends in a castle. We went to Paris on a regular basis, taking the two-hour high-speed train into the Gare de l’Est or driving with the dog and maybe some visiting relative, hurtling through Lorraine and Champagne in our German station wagon, purchased secondhand after a month of car shopping, a time frame that corresponded exactly to how long it took us to figure out that break was the French term for station wagon.
I worked in Lux for some time- interesting place. They used to say about their food, "German quantity, French quality." That was half right. I was over on the German side (Echternach), so was able to get by without speaking French. I eventually learned some French, but could never quite pick up Luxembourgeoise.
I lived there for five years, in the capital, and I have been in a Lux hospital for a medical emergency (they eventually had to fix a valve in my heart).
The finest German and French surgeons, cardiologists etc, not to mention those gorgeous petite French nurses (although that probably won't be an issue for a 5-year old).
I don't speak Luxemburgeoise, but who cares: most hospital staff speak German, French or English in various combinations.
I would not hesitate to go there again in a similar case.
Though you do need solid insurance - quality comes at a price.
Jan
The finest German and French surgeons, cardiologists etc, not to mention those gorgeous petite French nurses (although that probably won't be an issue for a 5-year old).
I don't speak Luxemburgeoise, but who cares: most hospital staff speak German, French or English in various combinations.
I would not hesitate to go there again in a similar case.
Though you do need solid insurance - quality comes at a price.
Jan
Some things might be more expensive than New York since Luxembourg has the second highest GDP per capita in the world behind Qatar.
Cost of Living Comparison Between New York, NY, United States And Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Cost of Living Comparison Between New York, NY, United States And Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Maybe because Letzebuergesch is more boor German than it is French.
Summer camping in Luxembourg still is compulsory childhood material.
You should try Ch'ti in the area just under Belgium.
(I go shopping in Lille a couple of times a year, with an obligatory visit to the Selectronic shop a mile under Lille, speaking Ch'ti with folks there is always a ton of fun)
'me and 'mamselle will be heading to those parts in late September/October -- mostly to see what's going on with "Le Centenaire" in the Somme region, perhaps down to Strasbourg -- but will see if i can convince the xyl to visit Lille!
I like living here because of all the electronic stuff Americans throw away. But you have to get up pretty early in the morning to beat the garbage man.
Last time I was there it was a bit of a boondoggle trip for a presentation at a conference in Geneva, so I got a car in Frankfurt and took 3 days to drive to Switz with Strasbourg the first stop. There are some really early Romanesque churches on the way -- ran out of time so I had to schedule another trip to Colmar.
Luxembourg is great if you know people there who are connected. But like Manhattan its not a place to go if you are poor. There is a significant number of Turkish 'refugees" who have migrated there and are stressing the local resources. The local industry is really EU governance so its more like Washington DC with no real generation of goods or perceptible services.
But they sure know how to party. I was at a birthday party there that started about 2 PM and ended at 5 AM. It seemed largely normal to the locals. Everyone I encountered knew English but that may not be a normal experience. Apparently you need to learn Luxembourgeoise to become a citizen. Its really a patois of German and French. I think the requirement is to control immigration since the schools teach English to a very high level.
But they sure know how to party. I was at a birthday party there that started about 2 PM and ended at 5 AM. It seemed largely normal to the locals. Everyone I encountered knew English but that may not be a normal experience. Apparently you need to learn Luxembourgeoise to become a citizen. Its really a patois of German and French. I think the requirement is to control immigration since the schools teach English to a very high level.
Luxembourg economy is based on banking and insurance. It is the second largest investment fund centre behind the US.
The largest group of foreigners living there are portuguese (over half of all immigrants), the rest come from Germany, France, Belgium, Italy and the former Yugoslavia.
The number of turks seems to be statistically insignificant.
Last time I was in Portugal in the summer the number of big new cars with Luxembourg plates was staggering!
The largest group of foreigners living there are portuguese (over half of all immigrants), the rest come from Germany, France, Belgium, Italy and the former Yugoslavia.
The number of turks seems to be statistically insignificant.
Last time I was in Portugal in the summer the number of big new cars with Luxembourg plates was staggering!
You likely meant Portuguese.
Due to the hefty economic crisis in Portugal and Spain, again a great number move abroad for labor.
Luxembourg has been a favored destination for job entry-level Portuguese since the first post-war exodus.
In contrast to earlier immigrant worker waves, they're now free to move to any EU country, thanks to the open borders.
Result is that currently at least 1 of 5 Luxembourg residents has the Portuguese nationality.
Say a couple of decades ago, a large portion of the Luxembourg foreign inhabitants were tax refugees.
Quite a few Dutch, as taxation differences between the two were/are by far the largest, in comparison with France/Belgium/Germany.
Driving through Luxembourg e.g., one would more than once witness Dutch plated trucks parked next to a house in the 'countryside' : independent Dutch foreign drivers who fancied it lots cheaper.
Now it's the land of the very poor immigrants, still remarkable how fast things can alter in such a tiny nation.
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The average teenager in Luxembourg speaks four Languages.
Letzeburgisch, French, German, English.
They also leave the country as soon as they are 18 i.e. finished high-school and come back at around age 30.
There is literally no one in that country aged 18-30.
Letzeburgisch, French, German, English.
They also leave the country as soon as they are 18 i.e. finished high-school and come back at around age 30.
There is literally no one in that country aged 18-30.
if you go to Luxembourg search for a Portuguese restaurant and eat there everiday , quantity and quality
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